1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for concurrently transmitting and receiving data through heterogeneous communication networks. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for concurrently transmitting and receiving frequencies of mutually different bands within a time-divided section, and transmitting and receiving data through heterogeneous communication networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as user's demands and interests for the use of the Internet in mobile environments are increasing, there has been a demand for wireless communication capable of achieving two-way communication using communication terminals, such as portable terminals, notebook computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc., regardless of time and space, that is, regardless of “when” and “where,” differently from the conventional data communication service using a wired network. According to such a demand, Wireless Broadband Internet (WiBro) has been developed, and has recently been adopted as a standard for 3rd generation mobile communication service.
Mobile terminals can be freely used without temporal and/or spatial limitations, owing to the portability thereof Efforts are being made to equip a mobile terminal with various functions through use of certain characteristics of the mobile terminal. Especially, with the recent increase of demand for ubiquitous networking, a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) communication function, such as a Ultra Wide-Band (UWB), Bluetooth, ZigBee, etc. has been applied to mobile terminals.
FIG. 1 is a view illustrating the exemplary configuration of a system including a terminal which supports protocols such as WiBro and WPAN. The system includes a base station (e.g. RAS) 10 for performing communication based on the WiBro, a coordinator 30 for performing through use of the WPAN, and a mobile terminal 20 including a portable subscriber station (PSS) 21 and a network device (ND) 25. The PPS PSS 21 and the ND 25 included in the mobile terminal 20 function as separate modules, respectively. That is, the PSS 21 performs communication based on the WiBro scheme, and the ND 25 performs communication with the coordinator 30 based on the WPAN communication scheme.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating the exemplary configuration of each communication device included in the system of FIG. 1. For example, the base station (e.g. RAS) 10 includes a base station controller 110 for controlling the base station, a WiBro medium access controller (MAC) 111 for performing a medium access control based on the WiBro scheme, a band processing unit 113, and a base station RF unit 115 for transmitting/receiving RF signals according to IEEE 802.16. The coordinator 30 includes a WPAN MAC 311 for performing a medium access control based on the WPAN scheme, a band processing unit 313, and a coordinator RF unit 315 for transmitting/receiving RF signals according to the WPAN scheme.
The PSS 21 included in the mobile terminal 20 includes a WiBro MAC 211 for performing a medium access control based on the WiBro scheme, a baseband processing unit 213, and a PSS RF unit 215 for transmitting/receiving carriers of a specific bandwidth to/from the base station RF unit 115 according to IEEE 802.16. Also, the ND 25 included in the mobile terminal 20 includes a WPAN MAC 251 for performing a medium access control based on the WPAN scheme, a band processing unit 253, and a WPAN RF unit 255 for transmitting/receiving carriers of a specific bandwidth to/from the coordinator RF unit 315 according to the WPAN scheme.
In order to perform communication in various communication schemes, which are mutually different, the mobile terminal 20 must include all modules for performing communication functions according to the respective communication schemes. For example, the mobile terminal 20 includes the respective MAC layers and the respective physical (PHY) layers for performing the communication functions of the WiBro scheme and WPAN scheme. That is, as illustrated above, the mobile terminal 20 separately includes a module for performing a function according to each scheme. However, when hardware necessary for each module is separately included, the number of components included in the mobile terminal increases, so that the manufacturing cost and the size of the mobile terminal increase.